When he saw the girl he loved so much rise wan and pale from the couch
on which she had been seated waiting for his coming, his heart sank
within him. How she must have suffered! he thought. What an awful blow
Cundall's death must have been to her to make her look as she looked
now, as she rose and stood before him!
"My darling Ida," he said, as he went towards her and took her in his
arms and kissed her, "how ill and sad you look!"
She yielded to his embrace and returned his kiss, but it seemed to him
as if her lips were cold and lifeless.
"Oh, Gervase!" she said, as she sank back to the couch wearily, "oh,
Gervase! you do not know the horror that is upon me. And it is a
double horror because at the time of his death, I knew of it."
"What!" he said, springing to his feet from the chair he had taken
beside her. "What!"
"I saw it all," she said, looking at him with large distended eyes,
eyes made doubly large by the hollows round them. "I saw it all,
only----"
"Only what, Ida?"
"Only it was in a dream! A dream that I had, almost at the very hour
he was treacherously stabbed to death."
As she spoke she leant forward a little towards him, with her eyes
still distended; leant forward gazing into his face; and as she did so
he felt the blood curdling in his veins!
"This," he said, trying to speak calmly, "is madness, a frenzy
begotten of your state of mind at hearing----"
"It is no frenzy, no madness," she said, speaking in a strange,
monotonous tone, and still with the intent gaze in her hazel eyes.
"No, it is the fact. On that night--that night of death--he stood
before me once again and bade me farewell for ever in this world, and
then I saw--oh, my God!--his murderer spring upon him, and----"
"And that murderer was?" her lover interrupted, quivering with
excitement.
"Unhappily, I do not know--not yet, at least, but I shall do so some
day." She had risen now, and was standing before him pale and erect.
The long white peignoir that she wore clung to her delicate, supple
figure, making her look unusually tall; and she appeared to her lover
like some ancient classic figure vowing vengeance on the guilty. As
she stood thus, with a fixed look of certainty on her face, and
prophesied that some day she should know the man who had done this
deed, she might have been Cassandra come back to the world again.
"His face was shrouded," she went on, "as all murderers shroud their
faces, I think; but his form I knew. I am thinking--I have thought and
thought for hours by day and night--where I have seen that form
before. And in some unexpected moment remembrance will come to me."
"Even though it does, I am afraid the remembrance will hardly bring
the murderer to justice," Penlyn said. "A man can scarcely be
convicted of a reality by a dream."
"No," she answered, "he cannot, I suppose. But it will tell me who
that man is, and then----and then----"
"And then?" Penlyn interrupted.
"And then, if I can compass it, his life shall be subjected to such
inspection, his every action of the past examined, every action of the
present watched, that at last he shall stand discovered before the
world!" She paused a moment, and again she looked fixedly at him, and
then she said: "You are my future husband; do you know what I require
of you before I become your wife?"
"Love and fidelity, Ida, is it not? And have you not that?"
"Yes," she answered, "but that fidelity must be tried by a strong
test. You must go hand in hand with me in my search for his murderer,
you must never falter in your determination to find him. Will you do
this out of your love for me?"
"I will do it," Penlyn answered, "out of my love for you."
She held out her hand--cold as marble--to him, and he took it and
kissed it. But as he did so, he muttered to himself: "If she could
only know; if she could only know."
Again the impulse was on his lips to tell her of the strange
relationship there was between him and the dead man, and again he let
the impulse go. In the excitement of her mind would she not instantly
conclude that he was the slayer of his dead brother, of the man who
had suddenly come between him and everything he prized in the world?
And, to support him in his weakness, was there not the letter of that
dead brother enjoining secrecy? So he held his peace!
"I will do it," he said, "out of my love for you; but, forgive me, are
you not taking an unusual interest in him, sad as his death was?"
"No," she answered. "No. He loved me; I was the only woman in the
world he loved--he told me so on the first night he returned to
England. Only I had no love to give him in return; it was given to
you. But I liked and respected him, and, since he came to me in my
dream on that night of his death, it seems that on me should fall the
task of finding the man who killed him."
"But what can you do, my poor Ida; you a delicately-nurtured girl,
unused to anything but comfort and ease? How can you find out the man
who killed him?"
"Only in one way, through you and by your help. I look to you to leave
no stone unturned in your endeavours to find that man, to make
yourself acquainted with Mr. Cundall's past life, to find out who his
enemies, who his friends were; to discover some clue that shall point
at last to the murderer."
"Yes," he said, in a dull, heavy voice. "Yes. That is what I must do."
"And when," she asked, "when will you begin? For God's sake lose no
time; every hour that goes by may help that man to escape."
"I will lose no time," he answered almost methodically, and speaking
in a dazed, uncertain way. Had it not been for her own excitement, she
must have noticed with what little enthusiasm he agreed to her behest.
This behest had indeed staggered him! She had bidden him do the very
thing of all others that he would least wish done, bidden him throw a
light upon the past of the dead man, and find out all his enemies and
friends. She had told him to do this, while there, in his own heart,
was the knowledge of the long-kept secret that the dead man was his
brother--the secret that the dead man had enjoined on him never to
divulge. What was he to do? he asked himself. Which should he obey,
the orders of his murdered brother, or the orders of his future wife?
And Philip, too, had told him on no account to say anything of the
story that had lately been revealed. Then, suddenly, he again
determined that he would say nothing to her. It was a task beyond his
power to appear to endeavour to track the murderer, or to give any
orders on the subject; for since he must kelp the secret of their
brotherhood, what right had he to show any interest in the finding of
the murderer? Silence would, in every way, be best.
He rose after these reflections and told her that he was going back to
London. And she also rose, and said:
"Yes, yes; go back at once! Lose no time, not a moment. Remember, you
have promised. You will keep your promise, I know."
He kissed her, and muttered something that she took for words of
assent, and prepared to leave her.
"You will feel better soon, dearest, and happier, I hope. This shock
will pass away in time."
"It will pass away," she answered, "when you bring me news that the
murderer is discovered, or that you have found out some clue to him.
It will begin to pass away when I hear that you have found out what
enemies he had."
"It is not known that he ever had any enemies," Penlyn said, as he
stood holding her cold hand in his. "He was not a man to make enemies,
I should think."
"He must have had some," she said, "or one at least--the one who slew
him." She paused, and gazed out of the open window by which they were
standing, gazed out for some moments; and he wondered what she was
thinking of now in connection with him. Then she turned to him again
and said:
"Do you think you could find out if he had any relatives?" and he
could not repress a slight start as she asked him this, though she did
not perceive it. "I never heard him say that he had any, but he may
have had. I should like to know."
"Why, Ida?"
"Because--because--oh, I do not know!--my brain is in a whirl.
But--if--if you should find out that he had any relations, then I
should like to know."
And again he asked: "Why, Ida?"
"I would stand face to face with them, if they were men," she
answered, speaking in a low tone of voice that almost appalled him,
"and look carefully at them to see if they, or one of those relations,
bore any resemblance to the shrouded figure that sprang upon him in my
dream."
"If there are any such they will, perhaps, be heard of," he said; but
as he spoke he prayed inwardly that she might never know of his
relationship to Cundall. If she ever learnt that, would she not look
to see if he bore any resemblance to that dark figure of her dream? He
was committed to silence--to silence not without shame, alas!--for
ever now, and he shuddered as he acknowledged this to himself. Once
more he bade her farewell, promising to come back soon, and then he
left her.
"She looks dreadfully ill and overcome by this sad calamity," he said
to Sir Paul before he also parted with him. "I hope she will not let
it weigh too much upon her mind."
"She cannot help it doing so, poor girl," the baronet said. "Of course
she told you that Cundall proposed to her on the night of his return,
not knowing that she had become engaged to you."
"She told me that he loved her, and that she learnt of his love on
that night for the first time," Penlyn answered.
"Yes, that was the case," Sir Paul said. "It was at Lady Chesterton's
ball that he proposed to her."
They talked for some little time further on the desire she had
expressed to see the murderer brought to justice, and Penlyn said he
feared she was exciting herself too much over the idea.
"Yes, I am afraid so," Sir Paul said; "yet, I suppose, the wish is
natural. She looks upon herself as, in some way, the person to whom
his death was first made known, and seems to think it is her duty to
try and aid in the discovery of the man who killed him. Of course, it
is impossible; and she can do nothing, though she has begged me to try
everything in my power to assist in finding his assassin. I would do
so willingly, for I admired Cundall's character very much; but there
is also nothing I could do that the police cannot do better."
"Of course not, but still her wish is natural," Penlyn said, and then
he said "Good-bye" to Sir Paul also, and went back to London.
As he sat in the train on the return journey, he wondered what fresh
trouble and sorrow there could possibly be in store for him over the
miserable events of the past week, and he also wondered if he ever
again would know peace upon this earth! It was impossible to help
looking back to a short month ago, to the time before that discovery
had been made at the inn at Le Vocq, and to remembering how happy he
had been then, how everything in this world had seemed to smile upon
him. He had been happy in his love for Ida, happy in the position he
held in the eyes of men, happy without any alloy to his happiness. And
then, from the moment when he had found that there was another son of
his father in the world, how all the brightness of his life had
changed! First had come the knowledge of that brother alive somewhere,
whom, thinking he was poor and outcast, he had pitied; then the
revelation that that brother, far from being the abject creature he
imagined, was in actual fact the rightful owner of the position he
usurped; and then the horror and the misery of the cruelly barbarous
death that brother had been put to, directly after revealing himself
in his true light. And, as horrible almost as all else were, the lies,
and the secrecy, and the duplicities with which he had environed
himself, in the hopes of shielding everything from the eyes of the
world. Lies, and secrecies, and duplicities practised by him, who had
once regarded truth and openness as the first attributes of a man!
And there was one other thing that struck deeply to his heart; the
bitter wickedness of a man, with such nobility of nature as his
brother had shown, being cruelly stabbed to death. His life had been
one long abnegation of what should have been his, a resignation of the
honour of his birthright, so that he, who had taken his place, should
never be cast out of it; an abnegation that had been crowned by an
almost sublime act, the act of forcing himself to witness the
happiness of the one, who had taken so much from him, with the woman
he had long loved. For, that he had determined to resign all hopes of
her, there was, after the letter he had written, no doubt. And, as he
thought of all the unselfishness of that brother's nature, and of his
awful death, the tears flowed to his eyes, and, being alone, he buried
his head in his hands and wept as he had wept once before. "If I could
call him back again," he said to himself, "if I could once more see
him stand before me alive and well, I would cheerfully go out a beggar
into the world. But it cannot be, and I must bear the lot that has
fallen on me as best I can."
He reached his house early in the evening, and the footman handed him
a letter that had been left by a messenger but a short time before. It
ran as follows.
"GROSVENOR PLACE, _June_ 12_th_, 188-
"MY LORD,
"In searching through the papers of my late employer, Mr. Walter
Cundall, I have come across a will made by him three years ago. By it,
the whole of his fortune and estates are left to you, your names and
title being carefully described. I have placed the will in the hands
of Mr. Fordyce, Mr. Cundall's solicitor, from whom you will doubtless
hear shortly.
"Your obedient Servant,
"A. STUART.
"The Rt. Hon. Viscount Penlyn."
That was all; without one word of explanation or of surprise at the
manner in which Walter Cundall's vast wealth had been bequeathed.
Lord Penlyn crushed the letter in his hand when he had read it, and,
as he threw himself into a chair, he moaned, "Everything must be
known, everything discovered; there is no help for it! What will Ida
think of me now? Why did I not tell her to-day? Why did I not tell
her?"